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Friday, February 10, 2017

Guest Post & Giveaway - Breathless by Beverly Jenkins

BREATHLESS

by
Beverly Jenkins

On
sale: 1/31/2017 | ISBN: 9780062389022

ABOUT THE BOOK:

As manager of one of the finest hotels in Arizona
Territory, Portia Carmichael has respect and stability-qualities sorely missing
from her harsh childhood. She refuses to jeopardize that by hitching herself to
the wrong man. Suitors are plentiful, but none of them has ever looked quite as
tempting as the family friend who just rode into town…and none have looked at
her with such intensity and heat.

Duchess. That’s the nickname Kent Randolph gave
Portia when she was a young girl. Now she’s a stunning, intelligent woman-and
Kent has learned his share of hard lessons. After drifting through the West,
he’s learned the value of a place to settle down, and in Portia’s arms he’s
found that and more. But convincing her to trust him with her heart, not just
her passion, will be the greatest challenge he’s known-and one he intends to
win…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

BEVERLY JENKINS has
received numerous awards, including five Waldenbooks/Borders Group Best Sellers
Awards, two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times Magazine, and a
Golden Pen Award from the Black Writer’s Guild. Ms Jenkins was named one of the
Top Fifty Favorite African-American writers of the 20th Century by AABLC, the
nation’s largest on-line African-American book club. She was recently nominated
for the NAACP Image Award in Literature. To read more about Beverly, please
visit her website at www.beverlyjenkins.net.

A NOTE FROM

Beverly Jenkins

Dear
Readers,

This
is the second book in the Rhine Trilogy and I do hope you enjoy it. With all
the issues and heartache Portia carried inside, I knew it would be difficult
for her to give her heart to someone, but Kent Randolph proved to be the man
for the job, even if I didn’t know he would be her hero when the story began.
Hope you’ll enjoy seeing Rhine and Eddy from Forbidden and, yes, they are still very much in love.

The
Fontaine Hotel is loosely based on the Mountain View Hotel founded in Oracle,
Arizona, in 1895 by Annie Box Neal and her husband William “Curly” Neal, who
were both of African- American and Native-American descent. The Mountain View
was a combination hotel and spa and catered not only to European royalty but to
wealthy visitors from places like Russia, Australia, and China, too. Look them
up.

The
great Apache chief Geronimo surrendered on September 4, 1886, and was promptly
declared a prisoner of war. He and his people eventually wound up in Florida
along with the Apache scouts the army employed to hunt him down. He died at
Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1909. The Apache warrior Lozen, also captured in 1886,
was sent to the barracks at Mount Vernon, Alabama, where she died of
tuberculosis in 1887. Although her name has faded from America’s memory, her
bravery and fearlessness remains legendary with her people.

I
only touched briefly on African-American women and the fight for suffrage but
hope to get back to it in depth sometime in the future. Until then, if you’d
like to do some research on your own, here are two excellent sources:

African American Women and
the Vote: 1837–1965 by Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, et al.

African American Women in
the Struggle for the Vote: 1850–1920 by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn

Having
the opportunity to create characters and stories that reflect my heritage as a
woman of color is priceless. Representation matters.Thanks again for the support and love. Thanks
also for spreading the word about my books to everyone you know. It’s much
appreciated.